Ideally, every infant would thrive in healthy, safe surroundings. An infant's development directly correlates with factors involving genetics or other physiological variables, the environment, nurturing and caregiving. Less than optimal conditions such as hereditary diseases, exposure to negative environmental factors and lack of proper nurturing or negligent caregiving can create disadvantages in an infant's development.
Genetics and Physiology
An infant's genetic composition is merely one factor that contributes to his development. If either or both parents pass on a disease or disorder, this creates a disadvantage. Similarly, any alteration to an infant's physiological structure can create a barrier to proper development. In addition to obvious afflictions such as cancer or birth defects related to a parent's genetic makeup or lifestyle choices, two of the most prevalent disadvantages for infants are autism and Down syndrome.
Autism is a developmental brain disorder, afflicting one out of every 110 children in America, according to 2010 statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Unfortunately, autism often escapes diagnosis until a child is four or five years old. Down syndrome, attributed as the primary cause of mental retardation and more easily recognized than autism because of its physical manifestations, afflicts about one in 800 children, according to CDC.
Environmental Factors
Negative environmental factors also contribute to disadvantages in infant development. Although researchers have yet to determine exactly how this occurs, autism may have environmental roots. The Environmental Illness Resource reported that potential contributors to the increased prevalence of autism include components in certain vaccines, such as the MMR, and exposure to chemicals and other toxins. Conversely, the American Academy of Pediatrics announced a March 2010 court ruling that other more recent scientific evidence disputed those original claims about an MMR-autism link. In other words, no consensus exists at this time that fully supports the connection between the MMR vaccine and autism.
Dr. Arnold J. Sameroff reported in "Environmental Risk Factors in Infancy" for the American Academy of Pediatrics that while several individual adverse environmental influences place infants at risk during their early development, the combination of multiple factors is even more damaging. In a Rochester Longitudinal Study (RLS) investigating environmental risk factors in infants from prenatal stages to 48 months old, Sameroff reported alarming correlations between those variables and the infants' development.
Sameroff's findings included the negative effects of lower socioeconomic status overall, along with 10 specific risk factors: maternal anxiety or mental illness, severe parental perspectives regarding child development, limited degree of maternal interactions with infants, unskilled parental occupations and nominal education, minority status, single parenthood and limited family support systems, large family size and stressful life events. According to Sameroff, any multiple factor combination resulted in increased rates of emotional and mental health issues, as well as lower intelligence, as children grew older.
Nurturing and Caregiving
When mothers or primary caregivers lack the ability or desire to nurture their infants, this failure creates disadvantages for the infants in two primary areas: attachment and brain development.
Psychoanalyst and researcher John Bowlby, recognized as the creator of attachment theory, emphasized the crucial importance of an infant's first relationship or attachment to her mother or primary caregiver. Bowlby stated that if a mother or primary caregiver dies, spends excessive time away from the infant or has little emotional investment in the infant, her development will suffer.
Likewise, in the crucial early stages of brain development, infants need loving, nurturing support and attention from their mothers or primary caregivers. Infants experience their world through all their senses; this requires time and devotion from their primary caregivers. When neglect or abuse occurs instead, infants suffer not only emotionally from the lack of nurturing, but mentally and developmentally in areas such as aggression and poor self-control as they grow older.
References
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Diseases & Conditions
- Pediatrics: Environmental Risk Factors in Infancy
- Environmental Influence Resource: Autism Spectrum Disorders
- Attachment Across Cultures: The History of the Attachment Theory
- University of Missouri Extension: Nature, Nurture, and Early Brain Development
